(no subject)
I can't breathe. I need to breathe but I can't breathe there is something in my nose and in my mouth. Why can't I breathe? My brain is not working on that level, I don't care about the why I just care about oxygen I need it. I need it to breathe and right now I can't breathe. So since I can't breathe in this position I must move to one in which I can breathe. Moving hurts. Being hurts. I need to move, staying still right here, right now, is death and there is a part of my brain that forces me to move. So one leg moves and so one hand moves and fingers move, and, those morons, they buried me and I'm alive. Am I alive? It's a good question. What is being dead like, could this be dead and I have no possible way of knowing it or not? It seems like a pretty shitty sort of afterlife if you ask me. Maybe it's like paying the ferryman or riding the river Styx it's just something you have to do.
What makes a person alive? Thoughts, movements, their need for air, their capacity to feel pain. These are things I have, I move, my fingers, slowly, pushing away what is in front of me. Kicking what is behing me, slow movements, but they are there, inching, pressing and moving in a direction I can only assume is up. Air. I need air, I can breathe but it tastes like copper and grit, loose and weak not good air, not the kind that I need in my lungs. Cold air, like the first blast you get when you step outside for the first time on a winters day. Or when you come up from air after holding your breath underwater for ages and ages. When I was little I would go under water in the tub and hold my breath and hold it and hold it, until everything hurt and I had to break the surface and suck in oxygen.
Each push forward hurts everything all over. Each push forward gets me toward colder and colder dirt or sand, or whatever the fuck this stuff is. I'm not dead, I'm just buried alive and like staring down into the hole with a gun to my head I feel that this is not the worst position I could possibly be in.
I don't know how long it takes me to climb out of the hole. I don't know how conscious I am through out the whole process, half way through everything stops hurting and when my fingers break the surface into the relatively cold outdoor air, everything starts hurting again. The air feels like a gift from heaven, never has anything tasted so good, so pure. On the cool, damp ground all I can do is lay still and not move. Not moving hurts a little less then actually moving. When you're in a hospital I never understood the subjective way people measured pain. Is a nine the same for me as it is for you? What is ten, is there something worse then ten? At this very moment there is something worse then ten and I am at it.
It is dark going on light when my eyes open again and the sky is turning the shade of light it usually does when the sun starts to rise, a white pink with the darkness fading and the stars growing dim. The light helps to move me through the field leading up to the barn. I am alive. I am alive and looking for fire like the first man to climb down from the trees. Gasoline. This is a farm there has to be gasoline somewhere in this shit hole. I should have set the house on fire, I shouldn't have gone in there I should have made them come out to me. This time I will not make the same mistake again.
Halfway to the shed, I have to rest, it hurts to breath, it hurts to walk even dragging the leg that hurts the most. Too much blood, too much oxygen, where there was not enough before there is too muc now. Too much for my brain, for my body and leaning against the most convenient tree on the face of the planet I throw up. I don't even know what there is to throw up, most of it looks like redish soup.
I am at long last mindless wrath. I am not tied to the past nor the present. Every step I take I take it toward one goal: the death of my father.
There is no gasoline in the shed. There is no gasoline anywhere, even the barn. Old Bastard had a farm EI-EI-OH. And on that farm he had an . . . AXE. EI-EI-OH. With a chop, chop, here and a chop, chop there. Here a chop, there a chop. Everywhere a chop, chop.
Old Bastard had an AXE right upside his head.
His scream is like sex. Thorough, satisfying, loud and shaking the timbers of the piece of shit barn he is standing in. The blood sprays from the gash in the side of his head and it takes the place of the smell of dirt inside of my nose. It smells like sweet morning and it comes even harder when the axe slips from his head after my hardest yank. All the energy I had went into that one swing, the second isn't as good, isn't as high but it lands into his knee which provokes another scream and a tumble to the floor the axe still in his leg. More, there needs to be more. Everything hurts, my brain my body, but my soul is dancing to the best music on earth.
That music will get the blond bastard's attention and that won't due, I won't have him rob me of this, no, not today. It's sweet, his death, I can taste it in my spit and in my toes and it won't be taken from me. The bastard has a gun and even in his gurgling and cries I can hear him, feel him, reach for it. It's mine. Even half dead I can still take him when it's a fair fight. The gun comes loose from his hand and just in time for the blond brick wall to come crashing through the doors to look at me. He stops, he stares and he stares, and he stares. He looks at me and he looks at papa bleeding on the floor. Papa is screaming, screaming to kill me but he doesn't move. His eyes are wide and while he is staring I raise the gun and grit my teeth. The first shot grazes his cheek. Fucking Christ. The kick even for a twenty-two makes me slink back in pain, it fucking hurts my god damn shoulder.
The shot startles the moron out of his stupor and I don't have to try for a second shot. He knows he's fucked, how though, he could get me, I know this, but he doesn't be backs out and he runs I can hear his footsteps. Fuck you, papa, your giant isn't here to protect you any more. He groans, Lord does he groan, and he cries out and tries to reach for me. I'm gone, he can die slowly in this barn without anyone or anything to save him. He can die in this fucking shit hole like he left me to die in that hole.
Outside the barn I move to the house. I'm thirsty. I need to collect my thoughts I need to. Do. I need to do. Do something. There needs to be a plan, I just - if only - only I can think. He's dead, the bastard, he's dead, what else do I have to do? Die, I should die now, if I close my eyes and just rest I can die and that would be okay. In the kitchen I think about dying and drink some water, a few glasses, I feel better after a few glasses, not as better as I could be but things are relative. Where do I go from here?
Just rest it will be okay if you close your eyes and just rest. All my strength went in to killing the bastard, there is nothing left for me. I need help, who would help me now? On the kitchen counter rests my cell phone and I open it up, power it on, it still works and I dial a number that I have not dialed in a very long time I should have dialed it sooner perhaps, but perhaps, perhaps, I'm so tired. I'm so tired if I could just close my eyes it would all be okay.
You've reached Bobby, sorry I am not able to answer the phone right now. Leave a message and I'll get back to you.
"Bommmby. . ." Is there still dirt in my mouth? I sound like there is dirt in my mouth and I try the name again and it won't come out just more of a mumbling, mushy sound before I give up. I'll try back later when I'm not so tired. I'll try back again and he'll be there.
There is noise in the driveway, a car on the gravel. That can't be, the brick wall, he's back. No, he can't let papa out. The idea of letting him out gets me moving, I had no energy before, but before papa was dead. Down the steps toward the barn, I don't make it, I can't make it, I just end up on the ground clutching the gun and watching the barn door. As long as no one goes in everything will be alright.
Someone is calling my name, who the fuck is calling my name? Is that my name? No, no, name calling, just quiet. I just want quiet, I want no pain. I want my mama, that's who I want, she'll make this okay. Just, she will, she'll understand. It's not her touching me, who is? There is no way to move them off, just, leave me, just, don't let him out. Just. I just.
I open my eyes. Kalle fucking Blomkvist. No good deed goes unpunished.